490 



The Weekly Florists' Review^ 



Mauch 6, 1902. 



HARDY MONTHLY ROSES. 



We would be very much pleased if you 

 would let us know through your paper 

 the best varieties of hardy monthly roses 

 in all colors for the garden and ceme- 

 tery such as La France. B. B. 



The word monthly as applied to roses 

 is not recognized as a proper term for 

 any class, but is meant, usually, to mean 

 those sorts that will give us flowers 

 during every summer month. There are 

 many beautiful roses that flower 

 throughout the summer; but, alas, the 

 winter in our nortliern and middle west- 

 ern states is too nuich for them, so in 

 any list I could give, these would be 

 of no avail. I would say now, as I have 

 on other occasions, tliat there are many 

 tea roses that are well worth growing 

 for summer bloom even if you have to 

 plant the young stock every spring, and 

 with tliorough protection they can be 

 carried over winter. 



Tliere is first of all Cochet, pink and 

 white; and the old, well-known tea roses 

 of twenty years ago. which are beauti- 

 ful in the summer months, particularly 

 towards fall ; Bon Silene, Saf rano, Isa- 

 bella Sprunt, Duchess Brabant, and 

 many small-flowering tea roses which 

 give a continuous bloom. The larger- 

 flowering varieties' which are now our 

 choice forcing varieties are not satis- 

 factory out of doors. Merraet, and its 

 fine sport, Perle des Jardins, etc., give 

 IIS but few flowers. 



The grand class of roses called hybrid 

 perpetual s, or remontants. do not war- 

 rant the name, for after their grand 

 burst of bloom in .Tunc there is not 

 much of anything after, so we will dfs- 

 iniss them. Tlie hybrid teas liavc proved 

 hardy under favorable circnmstances. of 

 which La France is a well-known type. 

 The familiar Agrippina is a China and 

 is quite hardy. The polyantha roses 

 are beautiful and quite hardy. In con- 

 clusion I would say that to fill the bill 

 and get what can be really called a 

 hardy monthly rose I would rely on the 

 hybrid teas. A list of tliom can be got 

 from anv reliable nurseryman. 



'___ W. S. 



THE ROSE CONVENTION. 



At the rose convention to be held in 

 Berkeley Lyceum Theater. 19 to 21 West 

 14th St., New York. Wednesday, March 

 12, by ■ the American Eose Society, 

 American Institute and the Horticul- 

 tural Society of New York, the program 

 includes the following papers: Best 

 Garden Roses, bv Dr. R. Huev: Hvbrid 

 Eose Stocks, by Dr. W. Van Fleet ;" Key 

 to the Garden Classification of Roses, bv 

 L. Barron. There will also be a general 

 discussion on new ro.ses. together with 

 various recitations, illustrated with 

 stereopticon views of roses and other 

 floral subjects. 



The program will conclude at B p. m.. 

 for the regular annual meeting of the 

 American Rose Society. 



VIOLETS. 



In our last we spoke about the soil 

 for the violet : equally essential are the 

 plants themselves. It is utterly useless 

 to plant a house with anything but first- 

 class stock; it is only time, labor and 

 room thrown away, for unless they are 

 strong and in every way healthy they 

 will not be able to successfully combat 

 the many insects and diseases that they 

 are beset with on every hand. I speak 

 of this now, even before taking up the 



house, as it is time tluit you were work- 

 ing up your stock if 3'ou expect to grow 

 a crop next season. In our estimation, 

 one thing is very important, viz., that 

 the young stock should never stop grow- 

 ing from the time it leaves the propa- 

 gating bed rooted, till in flower the next 

 winter. Just as sure as they get stunted 

 or hardened up (by this, I mean wood.v ) 

 just so sure you might as well throw 

 them out as they will never pay to 

 bother with and one cannot aft'ord to 

 waste room under glass if he is growing 

 for profit. 



It sounds foolish t<i keep reiterating 

 that you must take .stock from only the 

 strongest and best of your stock plants, 

 yet many seem to overlook this fact. 

 Where it is possible you should have 

 your eye on your stock plants from the 

 commencement of the season, for you 

 will see a great variation in plants, some 

 going to runners, some to leaves, some 

 to flowers early, and what you particu- 

 larly want is the plant that in every 

 way is good and gives .\ou a good crop 

 of first-class flowers for the holidays, for 

 that is when you want them, and want 

 them badly, and if you have what you 

 want then you will have plenty at other 

 times. If you will observe the plants 

 closely from year to year you will find 

 that there are many that devote all their 

 energies to flowering late in the season 

 when they are practically worthless; 

 such should be discarded as stock. 



If you have to buy your stock this 

 season to start with, my advice would be 

 to go and make a thorough personal in- 

 spection of several good growers' stock 

 before placing your order, as for the 

 reasons I have already given it is more 

 than important that the stock should 

 he A-1. If you have any good stock of 

 your own, work it up as far as is consist- 

 ent with health. Some growers buy some 

 new stock every year, but my experience 

 does not prove -this advisable, at least 

 for me, for I have never had such stock 

 do nearly so well as my own, and we 

 have had to grow it two or three years 

 before it would equal ours. Therefore 

 my advice is to always increase your 

 own good healthy stock. If it is pos- 

 sible work up twice the stock that you 

 expect to use. When planting you will 

 find many that are not up to the stand- 

 ard for one reason or another, and you 

 want to sort out the best to fill the 

 house, and the other half you should 

 plant in the field to have to fill vacancies 

 tlutt occur naturally during the summer. 

 The balance of the field grown plants al- 

 ways find a ready market to the less for- 

 tunate grower or to some one who finds, 

 last thing, that he has a spare house 

 that he could grow some violets in if he 

 onl.v had the plants. 



Don't think for a moment that when 

 you have your house planted that it is 

 all right for a few weeks, and that "the 

 boy " can water it when it gets dry, and 

 that you can attend to your spring 

 tiade, etc., for if you do you will find 

 that you never made a bigger mistake. 

 They will be more than dry when the 

 boy thinks of them, or he gets time from 

 running errands to water, and then he 

 will not have the time or inclination to 

 do it thoroughly nine times out of ten. 

 And the weeds! .yes, they will come up 

 thick as the "hair on a dog" and grow 

 twice as fast as the hair or violets. You 

 must keep a watchful eye on the house 

 from the minute it is planted; water 

 heavily when you do water (not to make 

 it soggy, but clear down) and keep the 



surface well cultivated with the little 

 liand-scratcher, thus keeping the weeds 

 down an4 saving all the strength for the 

 plants. Don't step or lean on the dirt 

 between rows for it will get all too much 

 packed down before the year is up with- 

 out any e.xtra pressure. 



You also want to go over the house 

 about eveiy week, as soon as they get 

 established and get to growing, and caie- 

 fviUy cut (not pull as many do) off the 

 runners close to the crown of the plant, 

 doing this often so that the strength 

 goes to the crown and not to making a 

 lot of useless runners to be destroyed. 

 E. E. Shuphelt, 



OUR TRAVELS. 



When you travel as far from home as 

 western New York is from the fine city 

 of Indianapolis it is altogether unwise 

 to return home, even if you have a one- 

 third rate, without seeing a few of the 

 famous establishments of this vast and 

 varied country that lies in the vallej- of 

 the Mississippi and its tributaries, "The 

 banks of the Wabash far away." So on 

 our road to the sky scraping city, a num- 

 ber of us, to our great pleasure ami 

 profit, alighted from the Big Four car 

 at the pretty little city of Lafayette. 



This city is not all French because it 

 bears the name of the great assistant; it 

 is cosmopolitan, like all our cities, ' If 

 you want the genuine American com- 

 munity you must join the Apache trilie 

 or dwell in a rural village of Vermont, 

 where a paler-faced type is found and 

 where the female bovine is pronounced 

 "kaew." But we are all Americans who 

 are loyal to the country and behave our- 

 selves, and we who make two blades of 

 timothy grow where once the swamp 

 held sway, and the pansy blossom in the 

 rural garden, or increase the carnation 

 from three and one-half to three and 

 one-half and one-sixteenth are benefac- 

 tors of our time" and place, and there- 

 fore particularly good citizens, either of 

 our native or adopted country. 



Here dwells the "Karnation King," 

 and like all really great monarchs whose 

 memory will be blessed, he is as modest 

 as great. But nothing I can say about 

 this kind, good man will help him or 

 me, for he is already well known. The 

 four or five houses of seedling carna- 

 tions, some first year and others second 

 year trials, are a beautiful and inter- 

 esting sight. Every Jihade of color that 

 the dianthus allows is here, and yet with 

 all these thousands of varieties it is but 

 a very few that arc worth sending out 

 to siipersede standard varieties; so rais- 

 ing seedlings is not all profit. It was in 

 these houses that first unfolded the pe- 

 tals of many of the varieties that have 

 made this place famous, marked an epoch 

 in carnation growing and increased the 

 revenue of many of us, and the good 

 work is still going on. 



Fine benches of the varieties being sent 

 out this year can be seen. "Stella" is 

 a beautiful flower of the Bradt type, 

 and remarkably free. "Alba'' is a finely 

 formed, large white, with medium 

 length of stem. "Apollo" is a fine look- 

 ing, very bright scarlet, and "Dorothy 

 Whitney" is a beautiful yellow. It is 

 worthy of note that nearly all the va- 

 rieties sent out by this firm have im- 

 proved under other cultivators' hands. 

 I don't infer from that that the orig- 

 inators don't know how to grow them. 

 I mean rather that they are merely given 

 plain treatment, and when extra culti- 

 vation is given they respond. 



